To accomplish my civic duty, Vinko & I drove offroad down a steep pass into a wash, across the desert, and over to Flamingo Heights to vote.

There's not much in Landers, not even a place to vote. I'm registered as a vote-by-mail guy, but rather than spending about $1 in postage to mail back the heavy cardboard vote-by-mail ballot, I chose to drive to the nearest polling location where I could drop it off, which happens to be in Flamingo Heights.

As expected, once again I saw no trace of flamingos, not even plastic ones. Maybe I need to explore more thoroughly. What I did see is a part of the desert that looks remarkably the same as all the other parts of the desert up here, only this part has a different name.

I could have driven there all the way on paved roads, but thought, "what the hell" and decided to take a short cut which, like most shortcuts around here, was more direct but quite a bit slower. I'd never taken this particular road before, so it also had that going for it and was drawn on the map as a straight line, which effectively eliminates most chances of getting lost in the desert and dying.

I had a hunch, and was right, that it would mean driving up a small rise of ten degrees or so, but that's no problem for my little Jeep. The descent into the wash, however, was near one of its steeper parts, so after making sure that Vinko and I were both strapped in, we rode down what I'm guessing is a 45 degree slope into the bottom of the wash. Please note that I'm no good with numbers and am prone to exaggeration.

But not, I think, in this case.

Anyway, it was fun little ride and the polling place was at the community center, a pre-fab metal building that's a step or two up from a storage container and just like lots of other buildings up here. One of the poll workers made sure everything was fine and put my ballot in a box just for mail in ballots that weren't, and our brief meeting means that if I die, my last words spoken to a human being weren't "I like your toenails," which I said yesterday in town to a woman in a parking lot.

I'm not happy about this vote, and not just because I think I got a lot of the questions wrong. I always worry about that, but am far too opinionated to ever cast a perfect ballot. My difficulty this time is that it's increasingly hard to vote for someone because I like his or her name or previous occupation. That's served me well in the past, but there's a growing number of people I wouldn't want anywhere near an elected office and I don't know enough about most of the candidates.

To me, they're mostly names on a ballot running for some office I never knew existed.

One of my hard and fast rules is to stop reading anything on the Internet or listening to anyone on the radio or TV who uses the words regime or agenda. It may be harsh, but I've learned through experience that nothing that follows will be important or give me any insight to whatever they're talking about. It will all be blather, talking points, and just fuel for all of the people who are delighted to hear someone repeat things they've already decided are true.

In short, nothing new.

I left a lot of the ballot blank just because I don't like to reward people who think or act that way and, since I never heard anything these candidates say or write, I have no idea if they're one of those non-thinking morons who populate our current political scene.

I'd hate myself, even more than usual, if I voted for someone who wanted to destroy capitalism, throw all the bums out, turn my nation's beauty into profits for companies, or couldn't get his or her head over the stupid idea of impeaching our president.

So, I hope the people who are sane and see elected office as something other than a way to make themselves and their friends rich and who try to do more than pander to the least among us get elected.

My confidence in that is minimal.

They're making progress on my new electrical pole.

Some real world, city conventions, have made it to this part of the world unless, of course, they originated here. One of them is a long-time favorite of mine, the USA marking and subsequent writing on the streets. I don't why, but it always made me happy to see these markings.

If you look closely at the pole, you can see somebody's witten USA along its length, but that doesn't reflect any of the obnoxious, chauvinism such signs and banners usually provoke in me. No one is cheering or acting superior here, they're just asking for help.

I'm not sure, but I think USA stands for Underground Systems Alert. Before any digging related to construction type things takes place, the first thing that I know of that happens is somebody has to go out and paint USA on the street or sidewalk where the diggins is to take place. That, incidentally, is a job I think I could handle and one I might be pretty good at.

Within a couple days of that alarm going out, all the utility companies send someone out to mark up the area using a fairly simple (which means I can sorta understand them) system of abbreviations, symbols, arrows, number and the like. That's another job I've wanted for quite some time now.

Now, in the civilized world, just about everything is being placed underground, mostly, I guess, to make things look prettier and to frustrate birds. I think that's happening here, too, biut with a couple important differences.

The main one, of course, is the number of utilities that have to respond to the USA call. Back when I lived in the city, the water company had to show up and mark water mains and sewers, the telephone and cable companies had to indicate where (and how deep) they'd hidden things, the electrical company let the diggers know where not to dig so the electricity could keep flowing and those doing the digging could avoid being fried, and the gas company did the same to prevent ruptures of gas lines and reduce the liklihood of visually appealing fireballs on the local news.

Each company had its own color for marking, and by the time the process of showing where all the underground stuff is located, there was an attractive display of colors, letters, arrows, and so forth all over the street or sidewalk. I guess the area to be dug up dictated the boundaries or the marks, but all-in-all, you'd end up with a damn fine idea of what was where.

For those who've never seen it, as memory serves the electrical company used red, the gas company yellow, water was blue, and I don't remember what the telcos and cable companies used. I just know they all put their company's initials by the marks so there wouldn't be any confusion.

Here where I live I expect this to be a much simpler process, mostly because half those things don't exist where I live: There's no sewer to worry about and no gas lines. As far as my cabin is concerned, while there was once a telephone line, there isn't any more. There's never been any cable for television, so water and electricity is about it. And, of those two, the electrical company is the one doing the work so I don't know if they have to mark their own stuff or not.

Anyway, this morning to fulfill their obligations and give Vinko something to get upset about, some guy drove up here and wrote No H2O on the sand just outside the fence between the pole and the dirt road. He did it in blue, so that's gotta be official.

It's also kinda funny, in a desert sort of way. Yes, there is no water. It's the desert and also why we call it that.

I'm not sure if the other companies have to show up just to let the electrical company know that they have nothing to do with this property or not, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it. What I (and Vinko) will be delighted to see is our new electrical pole stuck in the ground and the wires moved to it, something I'm sure will be done by some sub-contractor.

No, I don't have any say in the size, shape, or design of the new pole. My thinking is that it would be silly of me to even offer a suggestion or express a preference. I suspect the best I can hope for is whoever puts it up reciting William Mulholland's immortal words upon completion of the aqueduct that brought water to Los Angeles from the Owens river, "There it is. Take it."

Note that I, along with Mulholland, only mean Los Angeles in the legal sense. He didn't bring water to the part of the city where everyone lived, wanted it, and voted for it, no, he was far too clever for that. Instead, what happened is that the nearby San Fernando Valley was annexed and the water dumped there. And, yes, those fortunate enough to purchase huge lots of wasteland miles away from city center were surprisingly quite well off when the water started flowing. I think the movie Chinatown touches on this, but is worth watching just for Jack Nicholson and one of my favorite lines of all time that he gave to some rich bastard -- "How much better can you eat?"

So, yeah. I have some writing on some of the sand I own, but while discouraging and obvious on its face, it portends great things (as long as you consider a new pole something great)!